Where Recherche duTemps Perdu
meets Kirchliche Dogmatik
 |  |
Lots of stories to come!
140/82. That was my blood pressure when the nurse took it at Dr. W's on Thursday. A little high on the upper number. She also took my pulse and possibly my respiration, and I'm pretty sure those were positive numbers as well. Furthermore, similar numbers no doubt have continued to obtain since then. I'm only mentioning this to clarify that these numerical expressions are frequently referred to as vital signs, and so I am inferring that I am still alive, though you couldn't tell by my supposedly daily blog.
Simply put, it's been an emotionally rough few days. The retirement celebration last week definitely brought home a lot of closure. Closure is good. In fact, if only one half of what people said and wrote about me is true (and I don't see why they would lie), I can look back on a pretty decent career at Taylor. But that's just it: looking back. Closure closes. As Captain Picard said, "I am looking at more days behind me than ahead of me," though I don't have the regrets that he did in Generations. Nevertheless, suddenly the reality has become more real (subjectively speaking of course; metaphysically that would be incoherent).
A similar feeling arose out of that appointment with Dr. W. It was a good one, kind of funny in its own way, I suppose. After a solid exam by an intern, Dr. W then entered together with the intern and another doctor as well as Leo, the super-social-worker. She ran through some of the same tests as the intern did and then pointed out certain features of my condition (ratcheting and lead -piping) in some places, which everyone (well, the intern and practicing doctor) then tried out as well. I definitely felt like a guinea pig. Of course, I thrive on attention, so that's not a bad thing. My point is that we are now far past the point of "what" and are now looking at "where" and "how much." So, again, the reality just really hit me.
There are also the other realities of life, which will hopefully vanish as soon as the InterVarsity royalty check makes it to our door. 'Nuff said on that. Bottom line: I've been pretty depressed, paradoxically triggered by some things (e.g. the retirement celebration) that are actually incredibly uplifting. The human psyche is a strange thing.
In other personal news, the Alexandria Worsels are now at 4 and 2.
There are some really exciting things coming up very shortly, but--as long-standing readers know--I don't usually mention specifics ahead of time. However, it is possible that due to those upcoming events the blog will continue to be fairly sporadic. Regardless, both the survey of Islamic groups and the slow walk through 1 Kings will most likely be on hold and give way to some personal narrations. We shall see.
Cuneiform Numbers
June's visit with Dr. N went fine. There were some test results of several months ago that we had never received word on, and they were all okay. Dr. N and I had a brief exchange concerning Ahmadiyya Islam. He's one of the people that I think of whenever evangelicals engage in what I consider to be "bridge-burning" actions with regard to Muslims. Trust is very, very hard to earn and can be lost all-too-quickly.
Today is the 13th. 13 is supposedly an unlucky number, which is allegedly derived from the Babylonian system of numbers. I know that this is conventional wisdom, but I'm just a little skeptical. The Babylonian number system was based on the number 60. Depending on its position, a single downstroke could mean either mean 1, 60, or 3,600, as the picture shows. So, everything from 1 to 59 goes into the first box, everything from 60 to 3,599 into the second one, and so forth.
So, how would you write the number 13? This is where it gets funny because there is a special symbol for 10; consequently there must be some kind of decimal hunch underlying the otherwise sexagesimal system. The depiction for 10 reminds me of an angel fish. If you've ever had an aquarium, you may have had one of them swallow up all your neons.
So, if you want to write 13, you write the symbol for 10, link three 1's together, and combine them.
However, you must be sure to keep all your symbols in the far right box. Otherwise, you get the wrong number. Just by itself, the sign could mean either 13 or 780 or something even higher, so it needs to be in the right position. Location is everything.
There's only one problem. To the best of my knowledge, when the Babylonians scratched with their styli into the wax tablets or cylinders, they didn't have any boxes. So, then, how did they indicate position for their numerals? They invented a placeholder sign, which eventually took the place of our zero. It looked a little like a slanted π. And thus, the happy outcome was that it was now possible to avoid having your calculations accidentally be off by 767.
None of which says anything about why 13 should be an unlucky number. In Chinese culture, the number 8 is considered to be lucky because its pronunciation is a lot like the word for "good fortune," and number 4 has the misfortune of sounding somewhat like "misfortune." I know of no such explanation for 13 in Babylonian, though my Akkadian is extremely weak. Still, I had fun learning about Babylonian numerals, and I hope you did, too.
Just one of those days. Tonight as we were watching TV, I was doing something on this computer, and when I had some modicum of success, I said, "Praise God!" or words along that line. June asked, "Did you get something to work?" Put the stress on the something, and the question summarizes how most of the day has gone.
Tomorrow starts a short cycle of Dr's appointments. June has a routine check-up with Dr. N (chemo doctor), and on Thursday I get to see Dr. W (movement disorder specialist in Indianapolis).
| KINGS AND KINGDOMS | |
  | Bible Reading: 1 Kings 16:29-34 |
| V. 30: But Ahab son of Omri did what was evil in the LORD's sight more than all who were before him. (HCSB) | |
Things can always get worse--or so it seems. Some of my readers may know my contention that this present universe is the worst of all possible worlds, by which I don't mean the "logically worst," but the metaphysically worst that God needs to allow in order to bring about what ultimately will be the best of all possible worlds.
So, imagine a world β, which is the best of all possible worlds. We surely do not live in it. We live in α, the actual world. God is going to turn α into β, but to do so he needs to allow a certain amount of evil in order to demonstrate his sovereignty, both in grace and in punishment. How much? Just as much as it takes--no more and no less. Logically, there is a world γ in which there is even more evil than in α, but God will not allow γ if it is not necessary to bring about β. There is plenty of evil to cope with in α.
Just look at how the preceding kings of Israel had escalated their evil. Jeroboam set the standard, and the next three kings all followed his example; Zimri wasn't around long enough to make a fair assessment, but he definitely showed no promise of improvement. Then Omri raised the bar (v. 25), and now Ahab is about to set a new record in apostasy. The golden calves had lost their appeal; Ahab instituted a whole new state religion, at least it was new for Israel as a state religion. He married Jezebel, princess of Sidon, and made her religion, the worship of Baal, the official religion for the northern kingdom. (See the entry of August 13 for a quick overview of Canaanite deities.)
If my previous analysis is correct, God is going to put a stop to this downward spiral, and that is precisely what will happen-- eventually. We're going to see God intervene more with Ahab than with any of the previous kings of Israel.
Mostly Not on the Nobel Peace Prize
It's not as though the NPP has had much credibility for quite a while now. But at least there has always been a rationale, no matter how twisted, for awarding it. At least Yassar Arafat, for example, made some meaningless gestures. Jimmy Carter put in many years of campaigning for the prize. (See, the inset for observations of a couple of years ago.) At this point, what else can one do than to congratulate President Obama on receiving (using an Indian political expression) a "scheduled" prize. Congratulations, Sir!
| Since it's not cached on the web, allow me to reproduce my sentiments of two years ago: So, Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the U.N. Panel on Climate Change, for his work on publicizing global warming. The Times (of London) On-line reports that predictably the Democrats are interpreting the award as a rebuke of President Bush, who does not share Gore's views. The Nobel Peace Prize has been somewhat questionable off and on anyway. It is instructive to look at the list of former winners and consider how many laureates were of rather dubious character, who received the prize for some single gesture, which the rest of their entire lives repudiated. Yassir Arafat and Menachem Begin both were leaders of terrorist gangs. In his autobiography, written after his meetings with Begin, Anwar Sadat still gloried in the destruction he had caused by the Yom Kippur war. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev couldn't keep the Soviet Union together, even by taking military action against Lithuania; so, after losing the Cold War, he was given the Peace Prize for ending it. That's kind of like giving it to Hitler for ending World War II (which, I hasten to clarify, did not happen). The man who stood in Berlin and said, "Mr. Gorbachev, take down this wall!" and who really ended the Cold War, was overlooked. What I'm getting at is that the Democrats who are using the Prize as a jaded piece of propaganda are not really cheapening it; sadly, they are acting entirely in accord with the ideology that seems to be intrinsic to the Prize. Given the notoriety of the Nobel Peace Prize, one cannot ignore it. At least one wishes that it would be awarded to people who really are working for peace. Let me make a serious suggestion: The Prize should go to the two Ahmadyya sects of Islam, who are maintaining a solid pacifist stance, and who have always decried Islamic terrorism, not just when it's been a pragmatic PR move. It would appear to me that they aren't being true to the Qur'an, but that's all the better for them. They should be acknowledged and rewarded for their teaching, derived from their founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1839 -1908 ) . |
So, the bottom line is that I shall not devote this entry to the Nobel prize. Instead, let me talk about the Islamic group(s) that should receive the Nobel prize, namely the adherents of Ahmadiyya Islam. What follows is a rescension of an article in a dictionary on religious sects that may eventually be published by Baker Book House.
Ahmadiyya is an Islamic sect based on the nineteenth-century reformer, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1839–1908 ), who proclaimed himself to be both messiah and Mahdi.
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad lived in the Punjabi region. He was born in 1835 in a small village called Qadiyan. Ahmad first came to the attention of the greater Islamic world in 1880 with the publication of an exposition entitled Barahin-i-Ahmadiyya (The Blessings of Ahmad). I should clarify that Ahmadiyya (and consequently the name of the movement) does not actually refer to Ghulam Ahmad, but to the prophet Muhammad.
A few years later Ghulam Ahmad announced to the world that he was the Mahdi as well as the second coming of Jesus Christ. This version of the Mahdi is not the same as the Shi’ite one, where the Mahdi is the returning Imam, presently in occultation. Here it refers to the general belief that shortly before the last judgment a great leader will appear who will establish Islamic peace and justice all over the world. Sometimes this belief is also associated with a second coming of Christ alongside the Mahdi. Ghulam Ahmad professed that he was both.
Now, we need to be careful to understand what Ghulam Ahmad probably meant with these assertions. His claim to be the Mahdi was unbending, and there is no question that he saw himself as having fulfilled the prophecies of Christ’s second coming. But this latter contention did not mean that he thought he was Jesus Christ as understood by Christians, that is to say the incarnate second person of the Trinity. Rather, it meant that he, the Islamic Mahdi, also fulfilled the Christians’ anticipations of their future hope.
A few years before his death, Ahmad added to his claims by stating that “to the Hindus I am Krishna.” But again, what he most likely meant by that statement was simply that he fulfilled Hinduism’s expectations of Krishna’s return (or a little more accurately, a future incarnation of Vishnu, as promised in the Bhagavad Gita), not that he was a Hindu god—an idea totally inconsistent with his devotion to Islam.
Ghulam Ahmad attracted a sizable number of followers, who had to undergo an initiation ceremony (baya) into his movement, which consisted of taking a vow of unyielding adherence to Islam, as well as obedience to Ghulam Ahmad, and the latter would take precedence over all other human relationships. He taught his disciples to be strict in their observances, to relate to each other with love, and to avoid violence at all costs. The Qur’an, as Ahmad and his subsequent movement interpret it, never permits physical violence, let alone a military jihad, no matter how dire the circumstances may be.
Soon after Ghulam Ahmad died, dissension among his followers surfaced, and in 1914 a permanent split occurred,over the issue of the identity of Ahmad himself. No one questioned whether he was the Mahdi and messiah, but did that make him a full prophet? If so, he would be on a par with Muhammad, and all Muslims would be obliged to follow him. If not, he would simply be a great reformer, and the movement could retain partnership with Muslims around the world.
One side took the more radical view that Ghulam Ahmad was, in fact, a prophet, and that his movement was the only true expression of Islam. This group has become known by Ahmad’s town of birth as the “Qadiyanis.” Their leaders claim the title of “caliph”; they believe that only those who recognize Ahmad are genuine Muslims. Everyone else is kafir, an unbeliever. Consequently, Qadiyani Ahmadis are not permitted to identify themselves as Muslims in Pakistan.
The other group came to be known by the name of the city that houses their headquarters, Lahore, Pakistan. The Lahore group emphasizes the need for a pure, reformed Islam as taught by Ghulam Ahmad, but it identifies with mainstream Islam. They take the view that Ahmad was a reformer only, and that Muhammad was the last genuine prophet.
Both groups of Ahmadis are very active in attempting to reach new converts. In the context of the early twenty-first century, when many Muslims are attempting to rationalize or excuse acts of terrorism that have been committed in the name of Islam, the Ahmadiyya movement can claim greater credibility because of its consistent renunciation of violence.
A LONG WEEK THAT WENT BY FAST
Yes, I've noticed: it's been a while since I posted an entry. It's just been that kind of week. Let me quickly recount what has (and has not) transpired.
As mentioned in the last entry (Sunday), I intended to collect everything that I had in print. I made a little progress on Sunday, spent all of Monday on it, right through Tuesday afternoon so as to have it ready for the festivities at Taylor on time, so as to present it to the library archives at the dinner. The bottom line: I did not get it totally finished; there are at least two reviews and one article that I couldn't find. Never mind, it filled a little case, and I was looking forward to making the presentation. That is to say, I was looking forward to it until we were about halfway to Taylor, and it was too late to turn around and pick it up at home where I knew I had left it standing by the front door. Another "compile error" showing up in my cerebral CPU.
Okay, it's not going to possible for me to thank everyone who had a hand in making Tuesday evening so special; the aforementioned leaky brain would inevitably leave out someone who contributed something, but a particular special mention needs to go to Kari M. Thank you, Kari, and everyone else!
There was a late-afternoon cookies-and-punch reception in the library galleria. From there we moved to the banquet room in the dining commons and had a great dinner, and a few speeches. The highlight was the reminiscence by Kevin Diller, who is my replacement now, from the perspective of a former student. He came up to the rostrum with the manuscript he was going to read and an old (yellow) copy of Handmaid to Theology, to which he referred at the very end. That is to say, he made reference to my inscription at the front. "To Kevin, ...........the normal stuff. Signature." Then I had written something that I did not usually add and had totally forgotten about, but recollected vividly as soon as he mentioned it. "Perhaps some day we'll be colleagues."
I also received the traditional sweat shirt and coffee cup, some money for a set of books I've had my eyes on for a while, and the official plaque naming me professor emeritus. I now have an officially titulated identity again.
Then we moved to the recital room where former colleague and perennial friend Paul House, now at Beeson Seminary, spoke on leadership in the context of the Carter Lectures, using your faithful bloggist for a number of illustrations. Obvious modesty prohibits me from repeating what he said, but I guess I do want to mention that he surprised me a little bit with how much insight into the life and times of Win Corduan he showed. Thanks, Paul!
Then we got home at a good hour (say ten-ish). However, I was way too worked up to get to sleep before 4:30 a.m.
The last three days are pretty much a blur. I know I've written some e-mails, found ourselves without internet until we managed to settle the bill, took a number of naps, but really can't remember too many specifics, certainly not any worth mentioning.
And now, for the rest of my life . . . .
Yesterday we officially celebrated Seth's birthday. We (i.e. June and I from Alexandria, and Nick and Meghan from Upland) gathered at Seth and Amber's place and spent the type of day that has become typical for our get- togethers. We talk, play Wii®, eat (Nick made a scrumptious chicken stir fry), play with the "puppies," and there's no pressure on anyone to participate in everything. In other words, after a futile hour or so of racing various characters in their contraptions on Mariokart® and spending most of my time in the wall or the water, I took a nap.
On a sidenote, when Thera-wii is recommended for Parkinson's, I don't think they have Mariokart® in mind. It's Wii-sports® and Wii-fit® that are the beneficial programs.
Seth and Amber have a rather large group of temporary residents in their kennel at the moment: seventy-four pitbull terriers that were confiscated from dogfighting rings. Amber gave us a tour of them; each one is in its own cage. Amber knows each one individually, their temperaments, needs, personalities, and habits. Some of them will eventually be adoptable, but a number of them have been bred and raised to a point of aggressiveness that will make it impossible for them to survive outside of a cage. As you can see in the picture, Amber is pretty fearless, but there is a certain amount of danger, even in taking care of them, but I won't mention any accidents that happened to Seth last week.
I have started to bring to conclusion (if that makes any sense) something that I started to start a while back. I'm compiling a collection of everything I have written (i.e. on paper, not e-mails or blog entries): an exemplar of each article, book review, devotional article, conference presentation, hand-written manuscripts from the early days, etc., to present to the Taylor University archives on Tuesday evening. I was curious about how I would feel going back those thirty years and looking at my early efforts to become a half-decent scholar. There are a lot of memories connected to numerous articles or pages in books. It turns out that I'm having fun with it. God has blessed, and I'm thankful.
| KINGS AND KINGDOMS | |
| | Bible Reading: 1 Kings 16:23-28 |
| Vv. 23-24: 23 In the thirty-first year of Judah's King Asa, Omri became king over Israel; [he reigned] 12 years. He reigned six years in Tirzah, then he bought the hill of Samaria from Shemer for 150 pounds of silver, and he built up the hill. He named the city he built Samaria based on the name Shemer, the owner of the hill. (HCSB) | |
There are two things that interest me in this particular passage. The first one is that, while the northern kingdom of Israel was playing "king of the year," King Asa's long reign in Judah was continuing with stability and prosperity. I wonder if anyone in the North was making an inference concerning Judah and its overall devotion to Yahweh in contrast to Israel, which continued in its idolatry and suffered chaos and continuous instability. Omri made not a bit of difference in that respect. There must have been plenty of Israelites who did not go along with the false beliefs of the kings, but who, for various reasons, had no influence on the undulating monarchy.
The other item that intrigues me is the journey that the word "Samaria" has undertaken over the millennia. Who in the Western world has not heard of or used the term "Good Samaritan"? Of those, I presume, a far smaller number would be able to recount correctly Jesus' parable from which the term is derived, and the further we push the background facts--the identity of the Samaritans, the city of Samaria, the derivation of the city's name--one would expect the number who have knowledge thereof to decline geometrically.
It started with a person named Shemer, of whom we know nothing other than that he sold to Omri the property on which he built his new quarters, which was subsequently surrounded by a growing town. One cannot even really evaluate whether what Shemer did was either good or bad. Strictly speaking, it was contrary to the Law (Lev. 25:23; Num. 36:7) to sell the land you have inherited, as we shall see shortly in chapter 21, but those might not have been Shemer's circumstances at all. So, we have this simple gesture on the part of an otherwise unknown man eventually become a common designation for a person who does a good deed out of purely altruistic motives. The contribution is mostly verbal, but it is an interesting illustration of how small actions can have long-term consequences.
I'm sorry that this blog is still not broadcast again via RSS feed. One of the reasons I switched to Bravenet--other than that I was using a whole lot of their gadgets anyway--was the feed feature, but for some reason their feed adaptor is not picking up my entries any longer. The last one it took was Monday's. So, on Wednesday morning, after I realized that Tuesday's entry wasn't flying, I filed a support ticket, which was promptly acknowledged automatically. On Thursday morning I learned that my case had been assigned to someone. I have run a test entry, changed the title of the last entry so it wouldn't contain a reference to Islam (okay, very well may have listened to too many conspiracy theories), totally deleted the entry and posted it afresh---nothing on my side of things has made any difference. In the meantime there is silence on Bravenet's side; I didn't even get the expected e-mail asking irrelevant questions, and I know that they take off weekends. My present mental/emotional state is such that I had a hard time writing a new blog entry with a relatively small thing like that bugging me.
I had a great time today meeting with Kevin Diller's world religions class at Taylor, answering questions about Judaism. Being there reinforced both why I am sad that I can't teach like that any more, and why it wouldn't work any longer considering that I was physically done after the hour. I really felt some pangs, though, when they asked questions about their recent visit to the synagogue, good old Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation. For those who might be reading this and who missed seeing them on the field trip, here is a picture of the "Yahrzeit tablets" that commemorate a person's passing.
There was a nice article in Taylor's Echo about next week's official retirement festivities. Thanks to Carissa Chang for writing it, and to Paul House, Jim Spiegel, Phil Loy, Bill Heth, Kaitlyn Dugan, and Josh Watson for the nice things they said about me, and to Jim Garringer for the photo.
| KINGS AND KINGDOMS | |
| | Bible Reading: 1 Kings 16:15-22 |
| V. 15: In the twenty- seventh year of Judah's King Asa, Zimri became king for seven days in Tirzah. (HCSB) | |
King for a Week
Zimri had helped himself to the throne quickly and easily. Elah had been drinking himself into a comatose state, and thereby made it very easy for Zimri to assassinate him.
Furthermore, Zimri had an agenda that he immediately put into effect. He made sure that everyone connected to the previous mini-dynasty of Baasha was executed. So, you can't say that Zimri did nothing while he was king; he fulfilled the Lord's prophecy over Baasha. However he did not have much time to do anything else.
As it turns out, neither Elah nor Zimri had any business hanging out in the palace at Tirzah. There was military activity going on. Remember how Nabat had tried to take the town of Gibbethon back from the Philistines a while earlier? That was when Baasha had killed him and taken the throne for himself. Now, here we are, twenty-six years later, and they're still trying to do the same thing.
At first, the soldiers and officers around Gibbethon knew nothing of what had just transpired in Tirzah. But when word of Zimri's insurrection came to them, they immediately reacted in what strikes me as a very sound way. Elah, the former king, obviously did not much care since he had been in the palace imbibing while they were fighting. Who knows why Zimri was there? He obviously wasn't with his troops. However, the man who would have meant something to the army would have been the one under whom they had been serving. Omri was a general of apparently great competence. Consequently, when they heard of Zimri's coup the immediately acclaimed Omri as king and took a break from the siege so as to pay Zimri a visit in Tirzah. They easily conquered the city, and Zimri made his concession speech. Only he said it with fire, by burning the palace down over himself.
Now, there is an obvious lesson here: Never make yourself king when the people don't like you. In our present system that would translate more into: Don't delude yourself that, just because people voted you into office, they will approve of your decisions. They voted for you because they trusted you to be the right person to lead the decision-making process, but we haven't had a king since 1776.
But I also see a non-political application here. If you are a leader anywhere in Christianity, don't run ahead of the people whom you are supposed to serve. Whether we're talking about pastors, college presidents, leaders of various para-church organizations, or Sunday School teachers. Your plans for the group are not necessarily the group's plans. A good leader does not motivate his group to run behind him, but empowers them to walk with their leader.
On Danny DeVito and Avner Eisenberg
I just deleted this entry and am resubmitting it in the hope that the RSS feed will recognize it this time. ------ It didn't. It's been a day and a half since I submitted by request, and so far all I have is an e-mail that my case has been assigned to someone. Based on previous experience, tomorrow morning I'll probably get an e-mail asking all sorts of irrelevant questions, and they probably will not get to fixing it until early next week.
Tonight we switch back to our other series, the various subgroups of Islam, and we have finally arrived at the point that has everyone intrigued: Sufism. This curiosity must be due to the "New Age" conversion of this highly rigorous and demanding form of Islam to the ecstasy of a cheap pantheism. There are many parallels between Sufism in Islam and Kaballah in Judaism, not necessarily in their details of beliefs and techniques, but because both of them supplied a facet of personal piety to what might otherwise just have been a dry, legalistic religion. Both Sufism and Kaballah made themselves be felt on the level of the common believer, but both of them really apply most strictly to the initiated.
What comes to your mind when you hear the word "Sufi"? Perhaps it's Danny DeVito in Jewel of the Nile (1985) walking over the hot coals in order to become one of "us," where "us" is supposed to be a Sufi brotherhood, led by the "Jewel" (Avner Eisenberg), whose main spiritual practice appears to be some fairly nifty juggling. Maybe it's the whirling dervishes who have made a public display of their piety and aspirations for a long time. Or perhaps you immediately think of some of the poetry that was written a thousand years ago by folks who were known as Sufis.
The hitch is that in some way all of the above (though not specifically Danny DeVito to the best of my knowledge) could very well be associated with Sufism. It has followed Islam wherever Islam has crossed national and cultural boundaries and has taken on particular the cultural attributes endemic to its new host culture. However, its beginnings were neither glamorous nor entertaining.
A religion with a strong moral code is bound to produce a certain amount of casuistry, and, if left unchecked, the casuistry can very easily wind up draining the spiritual blood out of the religion, so that no one has any particular spiritual joy any longer, but everyone is concerned with doing the right things in the right way lest they accrue ever-increasing amounts of punishment. People want and need an outlet for their spiritual capacity, whether the object with which they fill it is real or unreal. Things get even worse if the common people are slaving away at a legalistic religion while they see their supposed leaders are taking it extremely lightly and are ignoring the very same moral code. As a result groups will form who will attempt to supply what is lacking spiritually in the otherwise purely ethical form of the religion. So, the Sufis came about as a reaction against both the aridity of legalistic Islam and the excesses of the caliphate. The word "Sufi" is supposed to be derived from the word for wool because apparently these early Sufis wore plain woolen clothes, an indication of the simplicity of the life they had adopted. They practiced all of the normal demands of Islam rigorously and in addition placed strong ascetic requirements upon themselves. Their lives were very similar to those of monks in Christendom during the same time, except they had one other variable to deal with, namely the threat of persecution by mainstream Muslims.
In order to fully understand the jeopardy involved, one must realize that Islam goes to great lengths to stress the transcendence of Allah. Obviously he has some imminence, or he could not work in the world at all, but the further one separates God from the world both in quantity and quality, where God has everything and the world is purely dependent on him, the nearer one gets to the common, Ash'arite, picture of God in Islam. In contrast, the Sufis' goal was to obtain union with God. This was an audacious goal for this Sufi and potentially blasphemous one in the ears of non-Sufi Muslims, a breach that led to some bloodshed.
Not that the Sufis made it any easier on themselves because they often expressed the concepts of unification with God or being in the direct presence of God with language that essentially meant being identical with God -- a huge distinction, though for many people an unnecessarily subtle one. Interestingly, this is the same problem that Meister Eckhart ran into in the 14th century. After all, person A can be united with person B without A becoming the identical person as B. But if A says that he has become B, even though he may only mean that he has become united with B, he has to take some of the blame for how people are going to react to what he is saying. Or, to put it yet another way, if you believe in theism and not pantheism, then you're best off not teaching pantheism because people may not be able to read your thoughts behind your words.
Well, enough of the advice column part of this exposition, let me summarize the basic facts about Sufism.
1. Sufism crosses the boundary between Sunna and Shia. On the whole it drew more from the Shi'ites than from Sunnis, but both doctrinally and devotionally it transcended this division.
2. At least in its original form Sufism was a very rigorous ascetic collection of pious followers of Allah's commandments.
3. In distinction to other Muslim groups, the Sufis believed that it is already possible in this life to be in the presence of God, a state of bliss that is usually in most Muslims minds, reserved for heaven.
4. In order to attain this bliss one must become absolutely pure.
5. Purity is attained through total obedience to God, to one's spiritual master, and to one's order.
For about two centuries Sufism and mainstream Islam (both Shi'ite and Sunni) were not at peace with each other. Early persecution and execution of Sufis had given way to an uneasy tolerance. The gap was finally bridged by a person who is beyond doubt one of the great thinkers of Islam, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111). Coming originally from an Ash'arite background, he felt stifled and explored various other options, including Sufism. In fact, al-Ghazali never met a philosophy from which he did not glean something, and he added new thoughts without necessarily discarding old ones. So, his embracing of Sufism did not imply a repudiation of his earlier conservative Islam. All of this sounds as though al-Ghazali was creating an eclectic muddle, but what actually emerged was a fine-tuned synthesis in which the orthodoxy of mainstream Islam was preserved and Sufism provided the spiritual fire that people needed so as not to be simply stuck in the rut of legalism. It would be going too far out on a limb to say that al-Ghazali thereby saved Islam (because it did not show any signs of collapsing), but he definitely contributed to the soul of the religion precisely by finding its soul and nurturing it.
As we said above, Sufism wound up taking on many different expressions, depending on the particular order and the specific geographical locations of the various orders. One of the best known orders are the Whirling Dervishes, who are at home in Turkey, and who believe that their personal rotations spinning on their own physical axis contributes to their attaining closeness to Allah. As the pictures taken by my friend Faye C. demonstrate, they are clearly combining personal devotions with free enterprise and tourism.
| KINGS AND KINGDOMS | |
| | Bible Reading: 1 Kings 16:1-14 |
| V.8: In the twenty-sixth year of Judah's King Asa, Elah son of Baasha became king over Israel in Tirzah; [he reigned] two years. | |
This Ain't Dallas and This Ain't Dynasty.
"This is a real-life two job working family," continued Hank Williams Jr. for our auditory pleasure a few years ago. That's all very well, but in the case of our passage, it's supposed to be a dynasty. God gave first Jeroboam, then Baasha, the chance to be the first of a long dynasty of kings on the throne of Israel, but he would not allow any kings who flaunted him to have their descendants retain the crown. So, just as Nadab maintained his family tradition of idolatry, Baasha did not change his ways either. Once again there was a warning from God, which he ignored, and upon his death, his son Elah lasted a mere two years on the throne.
We get very little information about Elah. Baasha had established his capital at Tirzah, not too far from the area where he had murdered Nadab. Elah was there, having a party. We read that he was drinking himself into a stupor; presumably all his rowdy friends had come over that night. One of his generals, Zimri by name, was apparently fed up with serving a king whose greatest accomplishments may have been partying like Bel Shazzar, and so Zimri followed Baasha's proven method: He killed Elah and made himself king.
So, would there be a Zimri dynasty? Well, we might ask in return, is the pope a Protestant? Things were far from settled there in the northern kingdom. So far we are at 0 for 4; there have been four kings, and each of them had promoted idol worship rather than worship of God.
I admit that it's not easy standing out from everyone else as different. I have heard that, when a few years ago a particular Christian college changed its policy on permitting faculty to drink alcohol, the main argument brought up by the faculty in making their case was that they felt uncomfortable not drinking at social gatherings when everyone else had a drink in their hands. If this report is true, I shall nonetheless refuse to offend fourteen-year-olds by drawing any comparisons, but I really do wonder how those folks would ever be able to stand up under genuine persecution if they could not even tolerate such a small amount of peer pressure. In contrast, we need to take sincere cognizance of the fact that Israel and Judah were surrounded by nations, all of whom had handy, visible gods while they were supposed to worship a god, whom nobody could see or hear. It's easy for me to understand that they must have felt the way a child might feel when nobody accepts the reality of his or her invisible friend.
The outcome is that God does make his presence unmistakably known, even if it is in judgment, as evidenced by the first two mini-dynasties. But he continues to give chances. If not Jeroboam or Baasha, maybe Zimri will initiate a godly dynasty. Or maybe Omri or Jehu. Israel, the northern kingdom, was his nation just as much as Judah, the southern kingdom, and he showed an enormous amount of patience with both of them. By his grace, we are his people now, and the same patience and the opportunity to start over again, is available to us.
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